How to Write an Eye-Catching Job Description

The first step to finding a great hire is getting your job description in front of them. Here are our top tips for crafting a job description that can’t be ignored.

A job description has a tall task: communicating the culture of your company, the day-to-day tasks of the job, and the type of candidate you’re looking for. On top of all this—it needs to attract and entice top talent to a place they’ve likely never been with people they’ve likely never met. There has to be enough information for the reader to get a good feel for the company and job, but not too much information that it discourages someone from reading the post. To help you attract talented culture-fits to your team, we put together an outline to help you craft an eye-catching job description.

Consult Internal Perspectives

The best person to consult on a job description is the person who was previously in the role or a person who would work closely with the role. Aim to consider both the opinions of a peer collaborator and the manager or director who will oversee and offer leadership to the role. Ask them what attributes are most important for a person to be successful in this role, and what soft and hard skills or previous experience they think the right candidate should have.

Write in a Way That Speaks Directly to the Candidate

Your post will be competing with hundreds (even thousands) for the attention of the right candidate. By speaking directly to your audience, using phrases like “you know how to design digital experiences that get shoppers to the checkout button” and “your passion for user experience is met with your deep understanding of the men’s grooming industry.” Get specific, avoid robotic, repetitive or commonplace job description dialect, and aim to reflect the friendly, enthusiastic voice of a recruiter.

Start Big Picture, Then Narrow Down

While your job description doesn’t have to report absolutely everything about the job and company, it’s important to find the right balance between enough information and too much. Finding the right balance means qualified candidates can determine if they’re a good fit for the role before applying. Start with general, high-level information about the role and company, so you can weed out anyone who isn’t right right fit before they dive into more specific information about the role. Here are our suggestion sections to include, in order.

Job title and location, department, full or part time, company name

Company Overview: 2-3 sentence description of your industry and company culture

Include Keywords

A well-written job post needs to do more than just translate the role in a vibrant, visceral way—it also needs to get found in the sea of competing posts. Think about what your ideal candidate will be searching for online and include those keywords in your post.

Before you get started on your next job posting, read our Real Cost of Hiring Worksheet. This will help you calculate the time and cost of advertising a position, screening a candidate and managing an internal recruiting process so you can choose the right course of action to fill your open position without breaking the bank.